


Bring Your Kid to Work Day

by fourshoesfrank



Series: autistic marvel [11]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Autistic Frank Castle, Gen, and im too lazy to make it line up, construction sites, i started writing this before s2 came out, idk much abt construction dites but dont worry, leo is trans and adhd, some implied kastle but it's TINY. two lines. tiny.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 19:37:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17689580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourshoesfrank/pseuds/fourshoesfrank
Summary: Leo has a day off from school and David convinces Frank to let her spend the day with him.





	Bring Your Kid to Work Day

"No."

David grabbed his friend's arm. "Frank, she's been asking for months. It's just one day. C'mon, Leo's your favorite, right?"

"I ain't doing it," Frank said, pulling his arm away from David and moving to shut the door in his face. "She'll get hurt."

"There's _hardhats_ , genius." David thumped the top of his own head for emphasis, just in case Frank had forgotten where a hat goes. He wouldn't put it past him; Frank seemed like the kind of masochist who worked all day around loose rocks without anything protecting his skull. 

Frank shook his head, both in refusal and exasperation. "Get lost." He closed the door.

Well, he tried to close his door. David stuck his foot in at the last second and pushed it back open. "I'm not leaving until you agree to this, man."

"You're gonna be here for a while."

"Alright." David stepped inside. "How about—" he glanced around the small room for something to use as blackmail "—I don't tell Karen Page you've got a shoebox full of her articles, and you entertain my daughter for six hours?"

Frank blanched. He stared at David for a long moment, probably to intimidate him. It wasn't working. Frank sighed and held out his hand for David to shake. 

"Six hours."

"Thanks, Frank."

 

-

 

"Frank! Open up, it's seven thirty!"

Frank had been up pacing for about three hours before the Liebermans knocked on his door. Normally, he'd be at the site by now, but no self-respecting kid would want to hang out with a couple of unskilled laborers at four in the morning, so he'd gotten dressed for the job and then tried to read. Curtis's recommendation of the week was Island of the Blue Dolphins. Frank liked it; the main character was smart and the plot was a nice change of pace from the flowery and overdramatic classics Curt usually gave him. Frank was going to ask him to recommend more books like that one.

Frank realized he hadn't eaten anything since yesterday's lunch. He also hadn't packed a lunch, or shoved the box full of Karen's work out of the way like he'd planned last night. He’d been too busy pacing. David knocked on his door again, reminding Frank that he had guests and he really should have been more prepared. He'd had, what, a ten hour heads up? 

"I'm comin," he grumbled, slapping a few bills on top of the shoebox and deciding that looked alright. He and Leo would get breakfast on the way, if she hadn't already eaten. Frank cracked the door to make sure it was just them, then pushed it open wide when he recognized Leo's eager face peering through the crack.

"Hi, Pete!" she greeted Frank, wrapping him in a brief hug as soon as the door was open wide enough. Her dad smiled at Frank and gave Leo a little push towards the inside of the apartment. 

"Go on, sweetie. I got places to be," David prompted her. "Good to see you, Frank. Place looks nice, too." Frank knew that that was just useless small talk, because his place looked pretty depressing, but he grunted a few syllables that could be a thank you or a fuck you. David opted for the former and grinned at him again.

"Get outta here, fool," Frank told him, not unkindly. If he was fighting off a fond smile as he said the words, that was because of Leo's presence and Leo's presence alone. David smiled again and left the two of them standing in Frank's doorway. Leo called a farewell after her father, who waved back as he descended the building's staircase.

And then there were two. 

"I didn't know you'd be coming straight here, else I woulda cleaned up a little," Frank muttered, stepping back inside. He'd thought David would drop her off at the site around eight, but apparently David had had other plans. "Come on in, though. Sorry 'bout the mess." 

Leo followed him inside and looked around. She didn't seem very impressed, Frank noted wryly. That was to be expected. Whenever he came to visit, Curt kept telling him to buy a vintage pinup to complete the 'hipster jail cell vibe' his place had. Frank kept saying that his actual jail cell had had better air conditioning than his apartment did, and he hadn't even been paying for the cell. It was an injustice.

"I don't think you have enough stuff to make a mess," Leo said at last, unknowingly echoing Curt's frequent tirades. Frank chuckled at that. It was probably true. If a tornado or some other natural disaster shit happened, it wouldn't take more than two hours to fix his place up. Maybe he should get one of those hipster wall tapestries. Curt would love that. 

"I prolly don't," he replied, busying himself with making a sandwich in order to avoid looking at his guest. "You had breakfast yet?"

"Kind of. I mean, Mom made me eat some toast, but that's all. I'm kinda hungry." Leo wrinkled her nose when she mentioned the toast. Frank couldn't help but smile at that; it seemed like Sarah was a lifelong fan of toast. Didn't run in the family, though. 

"Yeah, me too. How d'you feel about grabbing something to eat on the way?" Frank offered, feeling awkward. Being responsible for a kid was a skill that he had never fully developed, and now Frank had to keep a kid (who wasn't even his kid, which made it worse because he'd have to answer to her parents if he fucked up) safe for twelve hours, no breaks, no shortcuts. It was daunting, but Frank liked Leo. Hopefully Leo would still respect him when she saw him in action, doing his job. A smart kid like her had no business with him. 

Leo said something in reply, but Frank was too busy trying to quell the strange feeling that he was about to take a test to comprehend what she said. He forced himself to concentrate, though, because he had to keep her safe. That thought should stay in the foreground of his thoughts. Keep Leo safe. 

"Pete, are you okay?"

Shit, now the kid's onto him. Damn nosey family.

"Yeah," he grunted. “You like Wendy’s?”

“Yeah, but Mom doesn’t let us eat there anymore,” Leo groused. “Zach found a dead fly in his burger last year, and now every single Wendy’s is forbidden.”

“Damn,” Frank said, momentarily forgetting that Leo was only in seventh grade. Was it eighth or seventh? She was definitely in middle school. Leo giggled and nodded enthusiastically. Frank's chest clenched at the sound. He'd heard her laugh before, but this was the first time in a long time that he'd made a kid laugh. It didn't feel real. None of this felt real, but it was happening. He was responsible for a kid and she was talking to him so he'd better stop worrying and start listening. 

“Yeah, that’s what Dad said when Mom told him about it.”

"Sounds like him," Frank muttered to himself. He pulled on a jacket and ushered Leo out the door. "Let's go." God, why was he doing this? 

"How far is your work?" Leo asked as she walked down the dimly lit hall towards the stairwell that she and David had come up. Frank followed behind her, carrying two lunchboxes. He'd packed some generic kid food in hers, and if she didn't like that he could always run down to the bodega a block from the site and pick up something that she'd eat. Frank was trying, okay? 

"'Bout ten blocks. It ain't far, that's why I don't have a car anymore." Leo nodded at his answer and scampered down the stairs ahead of him. She let Frank take the lead once they were outside.

Leo kept up a steady stream of chatter that Frank only pretended to listen to as the two of them walked the nine blocks to the building that the crew were busy with. They'd been told to gut the place, remove everything that they could while still keeping it up to code. Frank just knocked down walls, and he said as much.

"Listen, I don't have the most interesting job, alright? Foreman sprays some paint on the walls that're safe to knock down, and I knock em down. You might get bored." It was a last-ditch attempt to make her reconsider, make her want to spend the day with someone her own age and go to the movies or some shit, because Frank might've (somewhat) trusted himself to not fuck up but there was no way his coworkers wouldn't screw this up. Well, maybe Sandy and Howie would behave like adults, but Donny had landed himself a different full-time job at some old Cuban señora's diner, according to some digging that David had done. There were still twenty or so people who were definitely not the kind of folks Frank would want hanging around Lisa. His opinions on who he'd trust around Leo were no different. Why had he let David annoy him into doing this?

Leo was saying something, tapping him on his shoulder, and Frank made himself focus again so he didn't have to ask her to repeat herself for what feels like the hundredth time in the twenty minutes she'd been with him. "Is that the Wendy's we're stopping at, Pete?" she asked, pointing across the street at the smiling redhead on the logo. Frank mentally slapped himself for letting his mind wander so far off-task.

"Yeah, that's the one." He waited for a gap in traffic and crossed the street quickly with Leo at his heels. 

The inside of the Wendy’s was dirtier than the cleanliness of the outside implied. Frank considered taking Leo somewhere else, but only for a moment, because the kid was already standing in line and beckoning Frank over. 

“Pete, it’s our turn,” she said, and Frank ordered a plain coffee. 

“One coffee...” the cashier entered it into the register. “What do you want, honey?” she asked Leo. 

“A six piece chicken nuggets, please,” Leo said, “and a medium Sprite.”

“Will that be all?”

“Yeah,” Frank answered for her. She'd had her mouth open with her eyes on the menu and Frank really didn't think they had time for dessert. Besides, it was just breakfast. He could tell David to take his daughter out for ice cream or some shit later, when Leo was no longer Frank's responsibility. He paid for their food and ushered Leo to the back of the line. "I'll wait for the food, you grab a table, yeah?"

"Sure."

Almost as soon as Leo sat down at a table near the door, their order number was called. This Wendy's was dirty, but they had damn good service. Frank took the food back to the table and sat down facing the kid. 

They ate in silence at first, because Leo was too busy chowing down on her nuggets to make conversation. Frank was fine with that. He was still trying to figure out why the fuck he’d agreed to this. He was a terrible preteen-sitter. No matter how much he cared about the kid, he wasn't going to be any good at this, especially in a construction site.

In between her fourth and fifth nuggets, Leo took a break to talk. “So what do you do, specifically?”

“Huh?”

She wiped her mouth on a napkin. “Like, at the construction site. What’s your job?” 

"Knocking down walls, just like I told you earlier. ‘S pretty much all I do. I'm warning you, kid, you're gonna be bored."

 

-

 

To Frank's complete and utter surprise, Leo was not bored. She was interested in every single piece of equipment. She asked Frank genuine questions about the sledgehammer he was using. A fucking hammer. If Frank had known the kid was so easily entertained, he would've agreed to this much sooner. 

No, he wouldn't have. She could have gone on a school field trip to a site or something, she could have experienced this in a safe and structured way instead of annoying her dad into annoying Frank into taking her. 

Leo seemed to have found a friend in Sandy, the woman who invited Frank on that disastrous bar outing. Frank didn't blame her for the way it had turned out, though, and he was glad that Leo had someone to talk to while he worked. He didn’t have much energy for talking at the moment. 

Sandy was showing Leo the safe way to rip out electrical wiring. Frank didn't know jack shit about circuits, or whatever wire things that Sandy was talking about, but Leo seemed interested. That was good enough for Frank. He’d knock down his walls, and Leo could get a chance to have an actual conversation while he worked.  


Frank was actually thinking about switching jobs. He'd been entertaining the idea of quitting construction, getting a gig that paid higher than minimum wage (the minimum wage from sometime in the 80s, no less), and maybe getting himself a dog. He missed his dog. Max was from the time in Frank's life when he'd actually felt like he was in control. Now, he was just existing, occasionally contacting his friends so they wouldn't assume the worst and report Peter Castiglione as missing. He'd once avoided going to Curt's group for three weeks without explaining himself, and Curt had almost broken into Frank's apartment at midnight, looking for him. Frank always remembered to check in after that. 

It was lunchtime. Frank hated eating with the other guys, and he sure as hell didn't trust the other guys to behave like decent people, even with a kid present, so he and Leo ate their lunches on the roof. Frank had never been scared of heights, but Leo seemed a little apprehensive, so he sat down in the middle of the rooftop and chowed down on his sandwich. Leo sat across from him and took a few bites of her apple before she put the fruit down to ask him yet another question. 

"Do you ever get bored?"

Oh, she didn't know the half of it. Curt kept telling Frank that he had a concentration problem, and Frank kept telling Curt to fuck off. And now Leo seemed to be heading down the same road—except, he realized a second later, she wasn't. He was being defensive for no reason. She was a kid, most kids' attention spans weren't the greatest. Frank nodded slightly in response to the question and took another bite of his sandwich. He chewed for a few seconds before verbally answering Leo. 

"I get bored sometimes, but this kind of work makes me zone out after a while," he explained. He'd said the same thing to Curt and had gotten a line about PTSD and disassociation, which Frank had dismissed right after that conversation had ended. He wasn't about to bring it up to Leo, who was fucking twelve years old. He wasn't gonna trouble a middle schooler with his problems. 

"I wouldn't be able to stand doing one thing for six hours," she said, and that made sense, because she was David's daughter and Frank knew that her father was pretty hyperactive. Maybe ADHD ran in the family, like a love of toast did.

"You're like your dad," Frank chuckled. "Guy's scatterbrained as hell."

This surprised a laugh out of Leo. "Is that still a word that people use?"

"What, scatterbrained? I heard it on the news a few days ago, swear to god."

Leo was still laughing, and it made Frank feel good, making a kid laugh. It had been too long since he'd done that.

 

-

 

When Frank handed Leo back over to David at the end of the day, he made sure that David knew this was a one-time thing. 

Frank fought a mighty battle to keep a fond smile off of his face as he said goodbye and goodnight to the Liebermans, and he surrendered as soon as he was facing away from their doorstep. He walked down the street, grinning like a damn fool, and thought that maybe he could manage to keep this up for another day.

**Author's Note:**

> oh man......getting feedback really sizzles my sauce


End file.
